COLUMBIA -- The S.C. Savannah River Commission voted Monday to ask the state attorney general to represent them in a challenge against the S.C. Department of Environmental Control.

The decision Monday was to declare that the state environmental board's approval of the Corps of Engineers' water quality permit "issued improperly and has no effect of law."

On Thursday the DHEC board approved the compromise conditions that had been presented to them by DHEC agency staff. The action came after the staff’s recommendation on Sept. 30 that the Corps’ request be denied and the Corps asked officials to revisit the issue.

“It’s already a river under stress,” said former S.C. DNR board chairman Mike McShane, during Monday's meeting.

He called the proposed oxygen-injection system to counteract damage to the river “speculative technology” and that, “It's not measurably going to help the dissolved oxygen levels in its current state, much less with (proposed) additional depth.”

McShane said a consent decree must be signed by tomorrow afternoon by 5 p.m., at the end of a longer deadline.

“Had DHEC not offered any comment and that clock runs out, then it’s as if they were then waiving their (permit) responsibility. So there is truly an urgency here of timing that I think the commission needs to be concerned about,” he said.

As for Thursday’s concession by Georgia to preserve an additional 1,500 acres of marshland to offset habitat that will be affected by the dredging, McShane said there remained, “a number of concerns about how they're going to mitigate those impacts.”

He also pointed to DHEC’s deferral to the National Marine Fisheries’ declaration that the deepening project would not harm the shortnose sturgeon.

“As your state resources agency, we should have some opportunity to have comment on that,” said McShane.